Link Building For SEO Still Matters; Unfortunately

Anyone that has been in the SEO industry for sometime knows how important link building is for SEO. From 2000 to 2010 link building was the main way to boost SEO rankings for a website in tandem with solid on page SEO tactics. Directories, Social Bookmarking Sites, Article Submission sites, and many other types of sites that could easily help you build links to your website were commonly used SEO tactics.

 
Unfortunately, link building for SEO has become much more complex and difficult. Simply trying to get low page rank links on sites that allow anyone to post a link to a website no longer create the same SEO value. Google’s algorithm updates, Panda and Pengiun have made it nearly impossible to gain long term value from low quality links or creating low quality content.
The trick to link building in the much more complicated era of SEO is to build quality, relevant links to your website. The problem with this is how to go about doing something like this in a programmatic fashion, especially when you are a newer business. The answer is actually doing everything else your business should be doing as well as possible. I am going to highlight some of those things to explain how they can help you build links for SEO.

Create Quality Content

The cornerstone to any good website is content. Content is not simply text; content is everything on the web and is a major part of the user experience. Video, images, infographics, illustrations, text, blogs, whitepapers, and anything else you can think of that you would find on the web is content. Focusing on creating high quality relevant content to your business and industry will incentivize other websites to link to your quality content. At the very least make sure you have a blog at site.com/blog not blog.site.com for SEO purposes.
Some Ideas for creating consistent relevant content:

• Blogging
• Whitepapers
• Infographics
• Screencasts

• Videos
• Tutorials
• Podcasts
• Slideshare

Social Media

Leveraging social media to share your content, business events, or anything else that your customers might want to know can help build awareness about your business. This will lead to more people and website owners / managers learning about your business, website, and ultimately a higher likelihood that they may link to your website. As I have written about before, social and blogging are two of the best ways to build an SEO presence, especially for a new business. There are also lots of niche social sites that can help you spread the word about content related to your business, such as Bizsugar.com, Seefit.com, scoop.it, growthhackers.com, and more.

• Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc…)
• Social Bookmarking / Niche Social Sites (Bizsugar, Seefit, Growthhackers, Angel.co, Scoop.it etc…)
• Forums

• Buffer
• HootSuite
• Disqus

Awards

If your business has won any awards or has any recognition from some sort of organization there is a strong chance they have a website that links to winners. This is a great way to get a relevant, high quality link from an organization that has a direct connection to your business. If you have won any awards or have thought about trying to get awards for your business, keep in mind that it can help your website’s SEO by getting a quality link to your website.

• Awwwards.com
• Industry Awards
• Create Your Own Awards 

Events

With websites like Eventbrite, Meetup.com and other networking websites popping up all over the web, event marketing has become a much more powerful tool for sales. Websites that host events can link to your website if you help organize or run the event. Find ways to become more involved in events that might be related to your business, and there will be a good chance those events might link back to your website.
Going to events can help generate new leads, connections and business on its own. Therefore using events as a business tool in itself can be extremely valuable. Consider the added bonus that it can help build links for your website as an extra, and not a reason to go to events on its own.

• Meetup.com
• Eventbrite
• Industry Events
• Tradeshows

Local Listings / Directories

Keeping your business up to date on the major local listing sites like Yelp, Google Places, YP.com, and more as well as any useful directories that are related to your industry are another great way to keep your website optimized for SEO. Keeping you business up to date on all the local websites is important for local recognition as it is, and often times it can lead to a legitimate backlink as the local community recognizes your business more frequently. A local listing is not necessarily considered a backlink by Google, Yahoo and Bing itself but they can give you local exposure that could lead to other valuable backlinks.

• Google Places
• Local Listings (YP.com, Yelp.com etc..)
• Directories / Niche Listing Sites (somuch.com  etc…)

Partnerships / Affiliations

This is one of the most overlooked ways to get backlinks. Having partners or affiliates that link back to your website is one of the best ways to get valuable links to your website. Every business should be looking for partnership / affiliate opportunities, and it also happens to be a great way to improve your SEO rankings. There are endless ways to make partnerships in business regardless of size or industry. No business can do everything themselves therefore finding other companies that can help or provide services that compliment your business can be a major boost to revenue or customer satisfaction.
Larger companies will most likely have partner programs that are more official with contractual agreements and stipulations for revenue sharing, commission etc… If you are looking to build partnerships with smaller companies or even sole proprietors that must be done on a more personal level that might be a more specific or custom agreement between your company and that business.

Community Out Reach

Becoming more connected to your community and local area as a business can often lead to other more profitable business initiatives as well as help the local community. This is a great way to develop new business while also giving back to the community at the same time. Try reaching out to organizations, non-profits, universities or any type of institution that might be able to help your business or vice versa. Giving back to the community as a business can be a great way to get positive exposure, and there is a good chance that institution might link back to your website which can be a powerful backlink.

• Non Profits
• Universities
• Schools
• Government Institutions

Competitive Research / SEO Tools

There are hundreds of millions of websites on the internet crawled by the major search engines every month. As their crawlers scour the internet new links and connections between websites are discovered. Tools like Moz, Ahrefs, Raven Tools and more can help you identify what backlinks are pointing to your website as well as what links your competitors have. Identifying backlinks from competitors may help you realize link building opportunities because chances are your business has many similarities and might be able to earn a link on one of those sites.

• Ahrefs
• Open Site Explorer / Moz
• Raven Tools

If you need help building links or coming up with effective link building strategies don’t hesitate to call Trellis!